Gone, Not Forgotten

I removed the Beta from my computer this weekend.  I hadn’t played in over three weeks, and every time I looked at how little hard drive space the annoying little imp in my head prodded me to just drag that Wotlk Beta folder to the trash.  So finally I did it, and freed up around fifteen to eighteen gigs of hard drive space for more episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ripped from rented DVD.

I feel like I’ve seen enough, although in reality I’ve seen very little.  I think my waning interest was mostly due to the loneliness of playing beta (no guildmates for company), and the pointlessness of questing, farming, or doing much of anything in a beta that will end sooner rather than later.

Also, it seemed like every time I started to log in over the past month, there was a huge patch to download first.  After downloading and installing, I never logged in.

I am not the ideal beta tester Blizzard had in mind when they sent me that beta key.  I feel bad about that, because as a Mac user I probably could have provided some valuable feedback.

Anyway, I am still going to buy the expansion and see if my lack of excitement carries over to the live game.  I think my interest will pick up.

November 13

Now we know the date.  That prompts the question, how is this going to change your gameplay over the next couple months?  Will you stop raiding?  Will you work extra hard to level that alt to 70?  Will you grind out the dailies like a Chinese gold farmer because you still need your epic flying?  Will you finally finish skilling up your fishing to 375?

For me, I’m not sure anything is going to change dramatically.  I raid because I enjoy playing with 10 or 25 people to achieve a boss kill, not for loot.  So I’ll probably continue raiding when I have the time.

I do have one alt, my Shaman, in his mid-sixties that I really ought to finish leveling.  However, beyond reaching 70 my goals for him have been changed because of the Wrath release date.  I don’t see myself grinding out his Shattered Sun or Skyguard rep.  There simply won’t be enough time, and frankly my hunter is more important to me in that regard anyway.  I’m already working on his rep with those factions, and I’d like to even open up Ogri’La for the extra Skyguard quests.

I figure it will be enough to get my Shaman to 70, and then I can just sit back and wait for the 13th.

The Future’s Always Near

WotLK is looming large on the horizon. There was an article today at WoWInsider about how the Zul’Aman Bear mount is going to be made unavailable in the next patch, rather than when WotLK goes live as originally stated. That has some people angry because no one knows when that patch will be ready.

No one knows when WotLK will be ready, either, but it may be sooner than we think.  I really think the early November release date is going to stick.  The game already seems very polished to me, although I can’t judge such issues as character, spell, and talent balance.

I do know that a Blood specced Death Knight is OP.  Everyone in Hellfire Peninsula General chat says so.

I’ve played all three specs on Carthius and tend to prefer Unholy personally.  It’s just flashier.  You get a Ghoul for a pet, and it is under your control.  You get a gargoyle on a cooldown, for that “Oh shit!” moment when you need a little help because you over-pulled.  And you get Corpse Explosion.  Oh yeah, the best Necromancer talent in all of Diablo II, now back in action in WotLK.

I still remember detonating a room of corpses.  I did it even when there wasn’t anything to kill.  Corpse Explosion could be chained in Diablo, if I recall correctly, sort of like a Warlock detonating multiple Seeds of Corruption for massive AoE damage.

I did play with the Blood tree a little bit Monday night, though…until the server went down.  That seems to be an all too common occurrance.  I play for fifteen minutes to a half hour, and then the server goes down without warning.  The Lich King/PvP server is constantly down.  I hardly ever get to play those characters.

It makes it difficult for me to actually spend a lot of time in Beta.  My time is limited anyway, and if I can’t get on the realm and stay connected for an hour or two, I don’t play.  I go back to my Warlock or Hunter.

Blood is a fun spec, whereas I found Frost incredibly boring.  When I first started my DK, I specced Blood first because it looked like a high DPS spec.  I specced out of it because the Blood Worms talent resulted in my character glowing green, as if he were diseased.  That issue has been fixed, among others.

What the Blood Knight has become is an unstoppable, self-healing killing machine.  Supposedly five of them can run Ramps without a healer.  I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me since apparently Unholy is also a bit OP these days; two Unholy Knights and a Priest three-manned Kara.

The screenshot on the WoWInsider page shows them standing over Aran’s body, a sight I always enjoy considering how much trouble that geezer has given all of us over the past months.  I would imagine the Anti-Magic bubble from the Unholy tree really aided them in taking him down.

I still have difficulty figuring out which tree is supposed to do what in a raid.  The WoWInsider article suggests that Unholy is for tanking, but I’ve also heard that Blood is for tanking…and so is Frost.  I honestly don’t know how they are going to fit into a raid, unless they are going to remain so overpowered that we are all just going to follow along behind the DK and loot the corpses after he finishes with them.

Heck, I have a tough time figuring out how to solo-play a DK!  Someone said in General the other night that a Blood Knight should tap Blood Boil twice whenever out of combat to create two Blood Runes.

Someone else said, “No, Blood Boil is our ‘Taunt,’ it doesn’t work like that.”

So apparently everyone is confused.

Anyway, I tapped Blood Boil twice; I looked in my bags…no runes.  I feel like a dunce, but what the hell does it all mean?

Anniversary

This Sunday was the second anniversary of my joining the World of Warcraft community. My first foray into Azeroth was on August 31, 2006. It’s amazing to think that there are some people who have been playing this game even longer than myself.

I’m not going to spend too much time on nostalgia, however.

I did not play the Beta much this weekend. I am probably not the best candidate to become a beta tester. Someone in my guild asked me if I had done an instance yet, and I had to say “No.” He asked me what level I am, and I said “Not even 71.”

I have trouble getting myself motivated to actually do something in beta because I know that any achievements aren’t “real.” There are some people who have leveled their copied characters all the way to 80; and there are some people who have leveled a Death Knight all the way to 80!

I could not do that. It would seem pointless and a waste of play time. I was barely able to stand power-leveling my Death Knight’s Herbalism to about 130 or so, just so I could try Inscription without having to give up a body part to buy herbs off the AH. Power-leveling a gathering profession is a form of punishment to me, anyway, and to have to do it on a character that will be deleted in a few months makes it even worse. I still think that if Blizzard really wanted us to test Inscription instead of running around low-level Azeroth zones gathering herbs for hours, they sould allow us to start out at 280 Herbalism the way they allowed First Aid to start out at a high skill level. Then at least we could gather herbs in EPL while leveling on mobs and questing.

Anyhow, I spend a lot of time in Beta just running around, exploring as much as is available to me at 70. I play my Death Knight, but am at a point where I think I am losing interest. I have brought him to Hellfire Peninsula at level 59, and the prospect of grinding out nine levels in order to go to Northrend at 68 just leaves me cold (no pun intended).

There are plenty of people doing it–HFP is choked with Death Knights almost exclusively–but I think they must be people who have given up on old-school WoW and are devoting themselves exclusively to Beta. Myself, I play Beta just enough to wet my appetite for more development of my “real” characters back in the live game.

For example, playing my hunter for a bit in Beta results in my wanting to play my hunter on the live realms. in fact, I spent the majority of my time this weekend on my hunter, leveling his mining to 375 and his engineering to 350 and beginning to gather mats for his major Engineering products: his flying machine and his Surestrike goggles. I also went ahead and bought him his flight training and a gryphon, just because being able to do the Skettis dailies will add to his income.

Having played both hunter and warlock in the Beta, I have to say hunters interest me most right now. That may change, however. I am far more experienced at playing a warlock and my Lock’s gear is a hundred times better than my hunter’s. I will probably level my Lock to 80 first, but my hunter won’t be far behind.

So that’s what I’ve been up to this weekend. I feel guilty that I haven’t done as much in Beta as perhaps I ought to have, but I have a limited amount of play time. For one thing, we sent our foster son off to college this weekend and spent much of the weekend cleaning house in the wake of his departure. Yesterday, I played for an hour or two in a coffee shop while my wife shopped at the mall, but all in all, game-playing was a sideline event, not the main attraction.